IVAN VALLEJO RICAURTE fresh
off his Shishapangma summit with his Spanish partner, Santiago Sagaste via
the the South West face (British Couloir) was planning on
Kangchenjunga
Spring 2005, but now has changed plans due to the cost of
Kangchenjunga with a small team. " I have new plans because the
Kangchenjunga was
so expensive for just two members. So we decided to changed it. Alex, my
partner, is going to Makalu, west pillar, with Spanish Television. And I
will go to Dhaulagiri and then
Annapurna with an Italian expedition. With my best regards from Quito,
your Ecuadorian friend. Ivan

His
first dispatch from 2005: My dear friends of Ecuador
and the rest of the world.

I send a warm hug with
love from Katmandu, the capital of Nepal. Here I am since yesterday,
March 29, with the same illusion and enthusiasm as always, now thank God,
towards the summits of Dhaulagiri (8,167 m) and Annapurna (8,091 m). I am
back in this city like every spring or autumn before going to an
expedition to the highest mountains of the world, located most of them
here in the Himalayas.

Katmandu is the same,
with its same colors, chaos and noise, but also with its hospitality and
love. This city, where the god of tooth ache and the flute salesman live
shoulder to shoulder in any corner of the street; living goddess Khumari
and the highest representative of the Maoist guerrilla; a shadu who
worships Shiva and a hashish salesman. By the way, there must be
something in my appearance because they come repeatedly to me to offer the
purest and highest hashish; and then I have to explain them that I get
high once I am over eight thousand meters of altitude, because of that
little detail of the lack of oxygen. Well, this is Katmandu.

But this particular city
and the country in general are immersed in continuous convulsions since
2001, when the late king was murdered with the whole royal family and the
current king took power. As part of those manifestations, in the last
years the clashes between the Maoist guerrilla and the Government have
been fiercer and precisely a brush of that activity came also upon
climbers; I guess that you remember that during last year, in spring, we
were assaulted in Makalu base camp.

For an update, I have to
tell you that the Government administration in Nepal was made by the
monarchy and the parliament, each with a fifty percent. On February 1,
(two months away from certain decision in Ecuador, because that is what is
between December and February, you see, what a coincidence) the king said
that the parliament was no more and annulled its rights, claiming to be
the only authority of the nation. As it could be supposed, obviously the
Maoist manifestations raised radically, forcing the king to suspend
cellular telephone communications and Internet to avoid conspiracies,
attacks and revolutions. Luckily, the communication blackout through
cyber space lasted a little more than a week. But the suspension of cell
phones has gone for over a month and a half. That is the way my dear
friends in Katmandu are now, like five or six years ago, relaying only on
fixed telephone lines. Of course, only when I learned this I could
understand why the heck nobody from the agency was in the airport to pick
me up, when they have already promised me. My flight from Bangkok was an
hour late and that changed all the plans; when I came to feel alone and
abandoned I asked for phone to call Nima Serpa, the owner of the agency in
Katmandu. When I was dictating the number to the Nepali who was renting
the phone, he said very courteously:

-Sorry
Sir. One month ago no mobile telephones.

- Ahhhhhh!
OK my friend.

Two images came to my
mind:

First, I remembered my
dear friends Alberto Sandoval and Luis Bernardo Silva (President and
Vice-President respectively of Bell South, now Telefónica-Movistar, my
sponsors) and how spectacular it could have been for them and their team
for almost one month and a half of vacations, just like that. Cute! To
suddenly be forced to throw away the daily stress of the meetings,
validations, deadlines, sponsorships to climbers; well, so many things.
To take their luggage and move to any of the little beaches of our
charming country, wear sneakers, jog on the beach a few kilometers, to
celebrate with a Pilsener or cold lemonade, and then... A mixed ceviche
of shrimp, octopus and clams with salty sidings. Wow, that would be
crazy!

After having a laugh for
a moment imagining this possibility, on the other hand, I thought that it
is the same thing on both sides: because here in Nepal there are children
who work in the street, because here in Nepal there are hospitals that
cannot accept patients because there are no resources, because here in
Nepal there is corruption in most instances of the government; because in
Ecuador, having taken decisions against any democratic principle is
nothing more than to shut ears to the basic fundament of the existence of
the human being: the communication and what it stands for; in other words,
to listen, to attend, to propose, to accept, to conclude, to respect and
finally... to decide. One way or another, using this same analogy between
the Government of Nepal and us, in Ecuador we have been with no
communication since December 1, between the Colonel and the people.

From my dear Katmandu, I
pray for these to months while I stay around here for the restitution of
the values of the verbs to listen, to attend, to propose, to accept, to
conclude, to respect and finally... to decide.